Tuesday, October 30, 2007

I'm making a list of lab tools. Random jottings for now. If some Mechanical Engineers have suggestions - I'm a little light in that area - chime in in the comments and I will expand the list. Plus any EEs have ideas chime in. Or any one else.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Defence News has a story up on the death of Dr. Robert Bussard in which they state that the US Navy has put up nearly $2 million to continue the research on the Bussard Reactor.

Robert Bussard, inventor of a promising method for producing energy from nuclear fusion, died Oct. 6. He was 79.

Bussard received nearly $2 million under a U.S. Navy contract in August to continue work on an inertial electrostatic confinement reactor he had developed. The reactor uses magnetic fields to confine electrons, whose negative charge causes protons and Boron 11 atoms to fuse. The fusion sets off a chain of reactions that produces electricity.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Tim Ventura has a 53 minute audio interview of Fusion Pioneer Dr. Robert Bussard at his site American Anti-Gravity. Let me give you a bit of what Tim has to say.

In our exclusive interview, Bussard describes the disenchantment with big-science Tokamak research that led him to return to the roots of Farnsworth-style fusion in the "Polywell" project that he initiated in 1986. Funded for over 20 years by the Department of the Navy, Bussard's EMC2 corporation was tasked with solving 19 fundamental challenges that stood in the way of designing commercially viable Farnsworth fusors - and in an unexpected twist, a race to bring the prototype online after project funding was cut in 2006.

Never straying far from the dream of manned spaceflight, Bussard's Polywell design is exceptional in being not only designed for high-efficiency, but also for portability - making it perfect for not only the Navy's intended use in powering ocean vessels and submarines, but also for providing high output thrust for proposed nuclear space-applications. Bussard's first intended application was an 8-foot diameter naval reactor capable of generating 100-megawatts of output energy, with the ultimate goal of using these reactors in high-velocity transorbital spacecraft capable of reaching the moon in less than 8 hours time.

To hear the audio go to Tim's site. He has links there. It is a most interesting talk and well worth your time. Dr. Bussard discusses his Fusion Reactor and other Fusion developments like Cold Fusion and Sonic Fusion. He explains why the last two, though real effects, are unlikely to lead to net power production.

Let me add that the US Navy funded Dr. Bussard's research this past August, about two months before he died. Two scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratories, one a long time friend of Dr. Bussard's, continue the work.

Dr. Bussard was well known to Star Trek fans for inventing the Bussard Ramjet.

The Bussard ramjet method of spacecraft propulsion was proposed in 1960 by the physicist Robert W. Bussard and popularized by Carl Sagan in the television series and subsequent book Cosmos as a variant of a fusion rocket capable of fast interstellar spaceflight. It would use a large ram scoop (on the order of kilometers to many thousands of kilometers in diameter) to compress hydrogen from the interstellar medium and fuse it. This mass would then form the exhaust of a rocket to accelerate the ramjet.

In the Star Trek fictional universe vessels commonly have magnetic hydrogen collectors, referred to as Bussard collectors or Bussard ramscoops. Those are seemingly fitted on the forward end of the twin "warp nacelles", and have a "reverse" function that allows for spreading hydrogen as well as sucking it in.

The Polywell is a gridless inertial electrostatic confinement fusion concept utilizing multiple magnetic mirrors. It was designed by Robert Bussard under a Navy research contract, and is intended to overcome the losses in the Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor to create fusion power.

In 1960, Bussard conceived of the Bussard ramjet, an interstellar space drive powered by hydrogen fusion using hydrogen collected using a magnetic field from the interstellar gas.

Some of his earliest work was in the area of nuclear fission rockets.

In 1956, Bussard designed the nuclear thermal rocket known as project Rover.

Dr. Bussard initiated some of the first major work on nuclear fusion in the United States.

In the early 1970s Dr. Bussard became Assistant Director under Director Robert Hirsch at the Controlled Thermonuclear Reaction Division of what was then known as the Atomic Energy Commission. They founded the mainline fusion program for the United States: the Tokamak. Later, in June 1995, Bussard claimed in a letter to all fusion laboratories as well as to key members of US Congress, that he, along with the other founders of the program, supported the Tokamak not out of conviction that it was the best technical approach but rather as a vehicle for generating political support, thereby allowing them to pursue "all the hopeful new things the mainline labs would not try".

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Here is a theory of the universe I came up with over the last few months. It may just be a crock but I'm having fun with it while awaiting the results of WB-7:

I have been working on a theory of the universe. It is probably stupid so if there are some physics guys out there who can critique this I'd appreciate it.

My theory says that the Universe consists of two manifolds at right angles to each other and that all particles in the two universes are traveling at the speed of light. Because of that relationship the Lorentz equation falls out naturally.

i.e. v12 + v22 = c2. Thus v22 = c2 - v12

with the subscript 1 standing for our universe (manifold) and subscript 2 standing for the manifold we can't "see".